What is 'Tata-ness'?

 

What is ‘Tata-ness’?

By Ajit Chaudhuri – 1^st July 2021

 

Some years ago, I was in a discussion with a senior leader at Tata on the subject of ‘social capital’ when he described a phenomenon that had no obvious explanation – that most Tata companies are among the top three players in any business, industry or sector they are in despite pay being at the 60 to 70 percentile within that business, industry or sector. He used the word ‘Tata-ness’ as a possible cause, along with the observation that good people prefer a professional environment that does not grate with their value systems.

I have since come across this term occasionally, usually as an explanation for phenomena such as the above, and also as a slur (the worst pejorative within the group is an observation that a particular person or company lacks Tata-ness) and as a powerful argument to or not to follow a particular course of action.

Coming into the Tata group from academia, my curiosity was piqued. Here was a term that obviously had deep meaning to most of the group’s employees, and yet was not subject to definition or description to any degree of consistency. I remember asking my boss’s boss, a Tata insider who had spent many years as an EA to a longstanding Tata Chairman and who could expound with detail and enlightened insight on a multitude of subjects, on what ‘Tata-ness’ actually meant, and he hemmed and hawed before changing the subject on to supposedly more pressing matters.

Two factors helped sharpen my understanding. The first was the fact that I have since spent more time within the group (and, ahem, moved up the food chain), and the second was changes in the group’s senior leadership with some personnel being drafted in from outside the group and requiring articulation of reasons for following particular courses of action that had earlier been obvious to all (and therefore left unsaid).

So, what is ‘Tata-ness’? To me, it is the combination of three sets of things: behavioral norms, values, and guiding principles.

 

Behavioral Norms:

·         One doesn’t talk, and if one must talk one does so only after the work being talked about has been completed.

·         One plays oneself, and one’s organization down. Others should find out about you from your work and what others say about you.

·         One encourages realistic assessments from peers and subordinates and is not susceptible to flattery and/or the echo chamber syndrome.

·         One does not look to thrive in loopholes.

 

 

Values:

·         Hard work

·         Honesty

·         Punctuality

·         Order (as in the opposite of ‘chaos’)

·         Fulfillment of obligations

 

Guiding Principles:

·         Adherence to the Tata Code of Conduct in letter and spirit

·         ‘The Right Thing to Do’

 

A little more about this last – in Tata, an important factor in decisions regarding possible courses of action is that ‘this is the right thing to do’. Like ‘Tata-ness’, this means something to most Tata employees and, as a principle, is deeply ingrained within our DNA. But what does it actually mean?

There is light on this in Kant’s expositions on moral philosophy and his concept of a ‘categorical imperative’ or a rule of conduct that is unconditional and not dependent upon any desire or end (in Kant’s ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’, 1785).

The Right Thing to Do meets three conditions –

·         The reasons for doing it are unconnected to benefits for the do-er (and the doing company) or the decision maker – if anything, the course of action creates greater responsibilities, burdens, and tribulations for them.

·         It benefits people who do not have the ability to influence the do-er.

·         The world would be a better place if more (all?) people/companies took this path or adopted this method.